Life as a 70s charter crew at TIA

ChasenSFO

hen teaser
A friend of mine shared this link with me the other day, it is a log created by a former Trans International Airlines flight attendant. She kept logs of all her flights(including deadheads) and crews she flew with in the 1970s and created this page full of photos and brief stories. I found it pretty interesting, a real blast from the past. You can tell that even though they were worked hard, they really enjoyed themselves. One of her trip logs shows a 43 hour duty period with 2 dead heads and 2 trips across the pond!
http://www.poochiepals.com/TIA.htm

A little history on TIA to give some background to those who don't know. They were one of the largest charter operators out there for a while. Based in OAK, they operated all over the place and it wasn't very common to actually see one of their planes on the ground there despite it being the MX/crew base. They had an ad that claimed they flew to more cities in more countries than any other airline. They flew freight with several Electras and L-100s but the pax ops were mostly DC-8s, DC-10s and a few 727s at the time this page is centered on. After de-regulation, they were the launch customer of the 747-200 Combi(and GE engines on the 747) and started scheduled flights with DC-8-73s until they stopped flying in 86. Their name was changed to Transamerica(owned by the Transamerica corp with the landmark skyscraper in SF) the last few years they were around.

TransAmerica742n742tvlgw84sarah.jpg
 
Seeing those pictures for the approach to Kai Tak was worth the click alone. Thanks for sharing, it looks like it would have been fun times
 
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